View full sizeDarryl Webb/Special For The Star-LedgerAttendees take a break during the American Legislative Exchange Council's annual summit in Scottsdale, Ariz., in December.

TRENTON — Unions and activist groups called on New Jersey companies to leave a conservative nonprofit organization that writes business-friendly model bills, charging that they roll back workers’ rights, harm public schools and disenfranchise minorities.

At a Statehouse news conference, leaders of such groups as the AFL-CIO, the state NAACP and Health Professionals & Allied Employees (HPAE) said Republican and Democratic state lawmakers have been introducing model legislation from the organization, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

The groups had planned to launch their campaign by pressuring Sanofi, a French pharmaceutical giant whose U.S. operations are based in Bridgewater, but Ann Twomey, president of HPAE, said the company left ALEC over the weekend.

"We have withdrawn from ALEC," Jack Cox, a spokesman for Sanofi, adding that the company was "not going to elaborate on the decision."

The unions and activists said they also planned to ask Honeywell, Daiichi-Sankyo, Novartis and Celgene to sever relations with ALEC. So far this year, more than 40 companies nationwide have left the organization.

Kaitlyn Buss, a spokeswoman for ALEC, today lashed out at the pressure being applied.

"It is ridiculous that job creators are facing intimidation attacks from special interest groups simply because they might belong to a group that promotes free-market ideas," Buss said. "This is a sideshow led by the same type of people that have been ‘occupying’ American cities. The primary concern should be getting the economy back on track ... not attacking job creators."

At the news conference, the coalition also unveiled a report by four liberal groups — Common Cause, People for the American Way Foundation, Progress Now and the Center for Media and Democracy — that had found identical passages in New Jersey bills and those written by ALEC affecting unions, charter schools, immigrants and federal regulations. None has been passed by the Legislature.

"Our message here today is that there are still three or four of these major corporations ... promoting what we consider is this extremist view and attack on working families across our state," Charles Wowkanech, president of the state AFL-CIO, said. "We’re fully engaged in this fight."

With Sanofi’s exit, that makes five New Jersey-based companies to have left ALEC this year, the group said. The others are Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Reckitt Benckiser and Medco, the report said.

James Harris, president of the state NAACP, said ALEC has helped spread bills around the country that make it tougher to register prospective voters.

Proponents say the voter-ID laws are meant to crack down on election fraud, but Harris said they end up imposing a "poll tax" on elderly and minority voters. New Jersey has no such bill.

"The way we view this is an attack on those victories we’ve had over many years," Harris said. "We are happy that Merck has pulled out and hope that we will have an opportunity to meet with some of these other companies."

Lawmakers have said they look to many groups and states for ideas, so some overlap is inevitable. Introducing model legislation is legal.

But Diallo Brooks of the People for the American Way Foundation said while many groups help write bills, ALEC is unique because it is registered as a nonprofit 501(c)(3). Those organizations are tax-exempt and not allowed to lobby elected officials.

"There’s always an opportunity for different interest groups to lobby elected officials," Brooks said. "But to do that under the guise of being a 501(c(3), where that’s not supposed to happen, we don’t feel that’s right."